A big thank you to everyone who is working on patches for the official canoe emulator - some real great stuff going on here!

I wanted to ask if anyone has tried Parodius Non-Sense Fantasy. I added the PAL version as well as using a PAL to NTSC Patch but it still sounds horrible (choppy sound). Does this stem from the fact canoe cannot handle some PAL games even if patched to NTSC?

Any hindsight would be welcomed!

Yes, avoid PAL when possible. For this one, play the Japanese version. Maybe even make a translation mgpatch by comparing both versions?

Hey Sluffy, I finally found some time to do some extensive testing. Apologies if this is a bit late.

Uniracers

I tested the ROM with hex edits at the following offsets:

x12E29x12EF1x12D6Ax1304Dx13095x12FC9

This is what I found after about 15 minutes each of playtesting:

[00] = Offscreen sprite appears in the top left of the screen, perfectly over the lap counter.Picture: Imgur Link[70] = Default[E0] = Offscreen sprite appears in the top right of the screen, only partially visible (about half of the wheel).Picture: Imgur Link[E1] = No difference from [E0].[EF] = Offscreen sprite appears in the top right of the screen, just barely visible (about 20% or so of the wheel).Picture: Imgur Link[F0] = No difference from [EF].[FF] = Offscreen sprite did not appear anywhere on the screen. I stared closely at the corners in case I missed it, but it appeared to me that the offscreen sprite just never appeared on the screen.

*"Offscreen sprite" can refer to the rival player's sprite or your own sprite, as long as the sprite is offscreen.

It should be noted that all versions displayed the rival player's sprite for a short period of time on the right side of the screen after it leaves the left side of the screen. Although it's also important to note that Sluffy mentioned earlier in this thread that this is a Canoe issue.

Front Mission - Gun Hazard

I did quite a bit of testing on the save issue with this game. I found out that the SRAM file which Canoe creates upon using the in-game save slots, is in-fact not deleted or removed in any way. The SRAM file is still located where it should be within the SNES Classic, this has been verified by FTPing into the Classic. I went a bit further and extracted the SRAM file from the Classic and loaded the same save file with Higan, it loaded and played correctly as it should. All of this probably isn't too surprising, but I wanted to note everything that I found.

The interesting part is that I tested a different approach to loading the SRAM. I started the game and played it like I normally would, and then saved to Slot 1 using the in-game save slots. I then reset the game using the "L-Trigger + R-Trigger + Select + Start" button combination that many SNES games feature. Following the reset, when I arrived at the game's splash screen, I pushed the Reset switch on the console in order to return to the Classic's main menu. It is here that you can create Save States, so I created one at that point in the game (the splash screen). I then completely shut off the console.

After turning the Classic back on, I loaded up the Save State that I had just created, which was at the game's splash screen. I then selected "Continue" and there it was, the in-game save file on Slot 1. I selected the save file and it loaded to where I had previously saved the game and it played like it normally would. Loading the game without using the Save State would result in the same as previous, the SRAM would not be loaded.

I don't know too much about the memory mappings of the different SNES ROMs, but it appears to me that the ROM is somehow "forgetting" that the SRAM file exists upon game shutdown/boot-up. However, the ROM clearly "remembers" the SRAM when using a Save State, even after game shutdown. I'm assuming this is the case due to the Save State loading the same exact mappings(?)/cache(?)/RAM(?) (no clue what you'd call it) from that previous playthrough.

Slayers

This game suffers from a completely different issue than Front Mission - Gun Hazard. The SRAM is saved correctly and detected correctly as it normally should. The issue occurs when loading the save file using the Continue option.

The game plays perfectly fine when selecting the New Game option, but when attempting to load an in-game save file, the game immediately glitches out and freezes. The screen will sometimes display a very quick flash of sprites(?) (I'm not too sure since it only appears for about one frame), or it might possibly be textures. Either way, it appears as if it's attempting to load the spot in the game from the save file (as the sprites/textures/whatever appear to be in the shape of the surrounding terrain where I saved), but immediately glitches out and begins to flash between black and a very faint dark-red(?), although this may just be a symptom of the aforementioned sprites/textures glitching out.

It should be noted that the music loads and continues to play perfectly normal as it should during all of this.

It should also be noted that the SRAM file does not become corrupted in any sort of way! I extracted the SRAM file from the Classic in the same way that I did Front Mission - Gun Hazard. I then continued to load the same save file in Higan, and it loaded and played correctly as it normally would.

I should also specify that this occurs in both patched and original versions of the ROM.

Another interesting piece of information that I think is important to note is found in the translation's ReadMe file. I'll copy/paste what it says onto here:

Quote

Revised English Patch Release – October 21, 2010 (V1.01)

Our Slayers patch is fully compatible with SNES hardware including copiers such as the Super Wildcard DX2. For PC-based playing options, BSNES 060 is the recommended emulator of choice. Due to its true-to-hardware core coding, BSNES should execute all game features flawlessly. Our patch has also been tested successfully with SnesGT.

At this time ZSNES and SNES9x do not appear to support some game features in Slayers, especially simulated battery saves (SRAMs). However, these older but venerable emulators should support basic game play through the use of save-states.

Wow! Apologies for the towering wall of text. I just wanted to be as clear and specific as possible. Hopefully it will help at least a tiny bit.And once again, thank you Sluffy for all of your hard work and for continuing to pump out fixes! You're an absolute machine!

Engine sound starts upon starting a race. It's often hard to distinguish because of other sounds. But it is constant. When the race finishes and goes back to menu the engine drone stays.

Fingers crossed for Front Mission GH. I can do some testing on the issue tomorrow. I have tried to get the game to load cart saves in a variety of ways (including trying out the method mentioned above) but had no luck. Game menu always boots up to empty save slots, even when the sram is in place on the FTP.

Thanks everyone for the info. Trying to get caught up over most of yesterday. If issue happens in snes9x 1.43 / 1.51, they've got debuggers so much better chance of a patch being worked on. But I do what I can anyway.

Gaia = crumbs. Engine is pretty stubborn (structured) about how it wants to do things for next workaround. I guess Canoe just paints bg1 black (instead of transparent) and be done with it. :|

Not perfect. But should work as a cursor. Gaia. Passable given Canoe atm.

Gun Hazard. Going to run trace logs on what a soft reset does differently. But. I muffed my saves on purpose and GH still thinks they can be read (detected). And then returns to title screen when fails to load.

Could Canoe not be loading the sram save.. because of file name oddity?"Front Mission Series - Gun Hazard (Japan).sfc" ==> "Gun Hazard (Japan).sfc""Kirby's Dream Land 3 (USA).sfc" ==> "Dream Land 3 (USA).sfc"(Forgot what Japan name is, suppose saves are borked there too)

update1:So 1st guess as to loud pops is either very fast adsr changes, not clipping correctly overflows, or looping sound problems. Maybe sound cache being used. Not enjoying audio debugging for now but will have to build up practice.

Tested Star Trek Deep Space Nine (US ROM) and Illusion of Gaia (US ROM + previous patch to work on SNES Classic), can verify both have their bugs solved. Deep Space Nine plays the intro instead of a black screen, and Illusion of Gaia now has a working main menu. Thanks, sluffy, this is really amazing work.

Edit: Another one in my personal collection that has an issue is Krusty's Super Fun House. The first level (and only the first level) has corrupted palette data, resulting in garbage. Here is Robin64's screenshot of the game's first level. Every other level works fine:

Could Canoe not be loading the sram save.. because of file name oddity?"Front Mission Series - Gun Hazard (Japan).sfc" ==> "Gun Hazard (Japan).sfc""Kirby's Dream Land 3 (USA).sfc" ==> "Dream Land 3 (USA).sfc"(Forgot what Japan name is, suppose saves are borked there too)

...

Lemmings -- is there a short animation of flickering in action? Exactly which frames it happens could give clue. Can't find this bug in emus

Game .SFC/.SMC file names can be many things. Depends what people added. I have definitely added Front Mission without brackets etc. If brackets stopped Canoe saving there would be a LOT of complaints from people.

Lemmings: will try make a video later. The flicker - if I remember correctly - it happens in game immediately. It looks like the two versions of the cursor - the + and the [ ] - are appearing in intermittent frames. It should only be the + until you hold over something and it changes to a [ ]. Basically the game acts like the cursor is always not quite clipping something.

There's a game that do not run at all : Dragon Ball Z Hyper Dimension (PAL or J-NTSC).It is a SA-1 game, so maybe it is a preset ID problem (as for hi-res), I'm not sure. What is sure is that other SA-1 games work, like Super Mario RPG (natively), or Jikkyou Oshaberi Parodius (using Super Mario RPG's preset ID).

As for hi-res, sorry to speak of it again if is useless: I waited some precisions by darkAkuma, so my informations might be incorrect, but from what I understand, the native Secret of Mana on the Snes Mini is a hacked one, modified to work correctly with the preset ID it has been assigned. I wonder what this hack is, and if it can be used on other hi-res games (like Rudra no Hihou, Seiken Densetsu 3).

It's odd, because the cursor glitch seems to have gone on level 1. Or maybe something changed in my setup. Anyway. It is in full force in level 2. On level 1 and every level there is also minor GUI glitching too which I try to show on the video.

Got a question on why even bother making these patches. I'm mostly snes9x / Geiger user. Bsnes(+) not so much except for emergencies. There's good handful of things that break 9x still, or it's popular 2010 port. And enough of these are targeted at Canoe. Maybe Ninty will pick up a few cues and fix some their own bugs for release (these open source patch changes are so banal they can't be copyrighted). Also if there's a workable hack, there's less complaining allowed.

And I prefer snes9x for its "unlimited" sprite feature. Plus hacky souped up build that gives zsnes 8-tap audio interpolation.

Got a question on why even bother making these patches. I'm mostly snes9x / Geiger user. Bsnes(+) not so much except for emergencies. There's good handful of things that break 9x still, or it's popular 2010 port. And enough of these are targeted at Canoe. Maybe Ninty will pick up a few cues and fix some their own bugs for release (these open source patch changes are so banal they can't be copyrighted). Also if there's a workable hack, there's less complaining allowed.

And I prefer snes9x for its "unlimited" sprite feature. Plus hacky souped up build that gives zsnes 8-tap audio interpolation.

These patches are wonderful because that way people can play the games with the native SNES Classic emulator (Canoe) instead of depending on Retroarch, which uses up space and also has input lag.